My earliest scent memory is of Davidoff Cool Water—a clean, oceanic fragrance that seemed to hang in the air at every family wedding I attended in New Delhi, where I grew up. Those nights were full of life, with cousins racing around banquet halls, aunties dancing, uncles laughing. Even now, one whiff of Cool Water takes me straight back to being a happy kid surrounded by people I loved.

I wasn’t allowed to wear cologne back then, or after my family moved to Winnipeg when I was 12. Of course, that only made me want it even more. When I was 16, my mom took me to Costco and let me pick out three bottles: Versace Eros, Versace Dylan Blue and Dior Sauvage. That’s when my obsession began. I saved every bit of pocket money for new scents and studied the fragrance craft, learning how to tell my top notes from my dry downs.

When I was 17, I launched a TikTok account under the handle @thecologneboy. My first videos were nothing fancy—just me unboxing bottles and chatting about packaging and fragrance notes. Looking back, they were full of beginner mistakes, awkwardly filmed and poorly lit. But maybe that’s what made them relatable. I wasn’t pretending to be an expert; I was learning in real time, and my excitement was genuine. I was just a kid discovering a new obsession, and........

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